Tinkerings

As I was driving down the road looking for the next great camera angle, it hit me.  Photography is really just a metaphor for how we teach.  And, quite possibly, should be a metaphor for how we assess.

Like our new curriculum model (love it? hate it? couldn’t care less about it?), there are some “common core” ideas one must learn and understand if he or she is going to take pictures.  While the list is not exhaustive, here are a few I’ve picked up along the way.

1. Understand your camera.  It doesn’t matter if you are shooting the latest and greatest Canon or Nikkon, an old polariod, film, a point-and-shoot, or your phone’s camera, you need to understand how it works.  What are its limitations?  How does it excel?  This leads us to point #2.

2. Read the manual.  My first trip to Knoxville for a Knoxville Area Photography Meetup I learned this one embarrassingly well.  I was shooting with a Canon Rebel, and I was already in way over my head.  “Do you shoot in manual mode?” I was asked.  Well…..uh…..no.  “Have you read your manual?”  I didn’t have one.  It turns out that every camera is just different enough that even the most seasoned photographers will need to read up on the manual if they change cameras.  The learning process is never done.  So, I did what any self-respecting technology geek would do, I used my phone’s Internet browser to search for and download the manual to my camera.  And I started reading instead of taking pictures.

3. Understand the basics of how a camera works.  This is different than the previous point.  By this I mean you need to understand things like focus length, aperture settings, ISO, and what all those little cute dials on the top and sides of your camera do.  I still get confused at times.  I know that as the space in which you are shooting gets darker, the ISO number should get larger (we’ll talk about tripods later).  So it is counter intuitive for the aperture to be the opposite.  To “shoot wide open” (meaning you are letting in as much light as possible to your lens), you crank the aperture number down to its smallest possible range.  The smaller the aperture number (which actually means a larger aperture opening), the faster the camera will take the picture and your images won’t be so blurred (we’ll talk about bokeh later).  I get this wrong all…the…time.  There’s more, but you get the point.

4. Understand the basics of composition.  The very first thing I learned about taking better (or to my mind, more interesting) photographs was the rule of thirds.  In the rule of thirds you imagine a tic-tac-toe board drawn across your screen.  Horizon lines either go on the top or bottom horizontal lines.  People or other objects of interest go on either of the vertical lines.  Faces go where the horizontal and vertical lines intersect.   Of course, at times breaking the rule of thirds makes the picture even better, so maybe we should call it the “suggestion of thirds.”  There is more, but you get my point.

Up until this point, we can assess a person’s knowledge of photography with a bubble sheet style multiple choice assessment.

Which of the following is not true:

1. The larger the ISO number the faster your shutter will open and close
2. The larger your Aperture number the faster your shutter will open and close
3. The smaller your Aperture number the faster your shutter will open and close
4. None of the above

Not rocket science.  But, the same cannot be said once we move away from the basics.  Notice the verb change…

5. Explore your creative side in composition.  People compose photographs differently.  They see angles differently.  We can’t all be expected to take the exact same shot that everyone else takes.  Using your camera at eye level will give you a much different shot than if you get down on your stomach and shoot from ground level.  Or climb a ladder to shoot from sky level.  Use different camera settings to get different results.  For example, I love to slow my shutter speed down as far as possible (take take longer exposures) and shoot rivers and waterfalls.  The water turns to silk as its movement is blurred over time, but the rocks and trees stay in sharp focus.

6. Explore your creative side in post-processing.  People say to me all the time, “Tim, your pictures are so vibrant.  Mine never look like that.”  Mind don’t either.  I make them look like that.  I used HDR techniques for a bit (High Dynamic Range) where you take 3 or 5 of the exact same picture but exposed as dark, medium, and light, and then combine them in a software program like Photomatix to analyze the best pixels in each picture and create one really eye-popping, jaw-dropping photograph.  Or, at least, that’s the plan.  I’ve moved from HDR to Tonemapping.  I let Photomatix do sort of the same process on one picture to bring out the best highlights.  iPhoto does a great job of changing color saturation, shadows, adding blurred edges, and more.  Make the picture you like.

7. On phone cameras, explore the app store.  Yes, this one could cost you some money.  I now have 15 different camera apps on my iPhone and 23 different apps for editing.  I also have 7 apps for taking different videos and several more for processing videos.  I hardly ever post a picture from my phone that I haven’t taken  through the Snapseed app.  Others I like to “grunge” up a bit just for fun.  Some people like them.  Others don’t.  But I am demonstrating a skill that cannot be bubble sheet tested.

As teachers, we know we can’t test everything a student knows with multiple choice questions.  We can assess the basics.  But to stretch students into being creative creatures, we need to learn different assessment techniques.  We need to move away from “you didn’t make this look exactly like mine,” to “I see you are mastering this concept.”

I believe photography is making me a better teacher.  I know it is making me a better student.

This morning I got in the car at the Starbucks on Sand Lake Road in Orlando, FL and set my GPS Navigation system to see how well it did to show me the way home.  It was about 6 AM.  By the time I got on the road, it had estimated my arrival time to be 3:15.  Not bad.

As I drove across the Florida Parkway toward Interstate 75, I noticed that the estimated time of arrival kept decreasing.  When I made my first stop some 3 hours after starting, the arrival time was down to 2:20.  I had cut nearly an hour off my expected time!

Immediately my mind made the leap to TVAAS and using the gain in time as a method of evaluating my effectiveness as a driver.  (Who wouldn’t, right?).

In education, Value Added is a statistical attempt to demonstrate the impact a teacher has on a student’s learning over the course of the year.  A number of variables are taken into account in order to compensate for them (age, sex, socio-economic status, last year’s test results, etc).  The idea is, that any improvement demonstrated by TVAAS is directly correlated to the impact of the teacher.  So, if the student does what was “expected” by the model, that scores a ZERO (as a baseline).  If the student does better than the model predicted, the teacher gets a positive number.  Likewise, if the student scores less than predicted the teacher gets a negative number.  And these numbers are part of what is used to determine if the teacher is effective or not.

No pressure, right?

So, I thought that if I arrived BEFORE my predicted time, that should be a positive number directly related to the driver.  If I arrived LATER THAN my predicted time, then that would be a negative for me.

Positive : Effective.  Negative : Ineffective.

But then it hit me.  In order to arrive early, I would have to give up a couple of fun things I planned to do as part of my trip.  I had planned on stopping at High Falls State Park and taking some pictures of the waterfalls.  I also planned on stopping in Atlanta for lunch.  Those things would bump my arrival time later than the prediction.

So I had a choice.  I could concentrate solely on the numbers and making sure I was “effective” as a driver.  This would mean limiting stops to bathroom breaks and pumping gas.  I would have to scout out locations for both that were easily accessible from the highway to limit my downtime away from the car.  Driving from point A to point B would be the only thing I had time to do!

Or… (and this is huge)… I could choose to both drive from point A to point B AND add my own value to the drive.  I needed the rest I would get from walking around at the park.  It was actually better for my own health to do so.  And, I could find a place to eat that would expand my horizons, get me out of my own little world, and make me a more complete person in the process.

Teachers are faced with this choice every day.  Because TCAP is so important for rating schools, students, and now teachers, it is the end-all of education.  We don’t have time for cultural diversity.  We don’t have time for field trips.  We don’t have time for visiting speakers.  We have these standards to cover.  We have to test the kids to see if they are ready for the test.  Point A to Point B.  That’s it.

But what if I chose the second option in my classroom?  What if I chose to be less concerned with TVAAS and more concerned about creating a well-rounded individual who would be prepared to go out into the world upon graduation?  What if I did emphasize those field trips?  What if I did attempt to expand cultural horizons?  Would I be willing to be considered professionally less effective in order to be individually more effective?

These are the thoughts that went through my mind as I wandered through the woods of the state park.  I thought about them again as I enjoyed lunch at one of my favorite places in Atlanta (the OK Cafe, in case you were wondering).  I chose Plan B.

I arrived at home at 3:55.  Some 40 minutes later than the test data should I should have.

I guess I have to be considered an ineffective driver.

But I was able to put joy back into the journey.  And that, as they say, is that.

As you know by now, I’m on my 2nd round of HCG injections to help lose weight.  With the advice of the nurse at my clinic, I stopped taking HCG on the Friday before Thanksgiving.  I was told to eat sensibly leading up to Thanksgiving (OK, I forgot that part and ate everything I wanted).  Then, I started HCG injections again on Thanksgiving Day and used Thursday and Friday as new “load” days to stock up on calories and get ready for some final days of weight loss over the next 2 weeks.

I gained about 5 pounds in one week.  It wasn’t pretty.  I wasn’t happy.  I wasn’t proud of myself.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved the food!  I ate without guilt knowing I would be back on track in a few days.

I’ve been back on 500 calories a day now for 3 full days and I’ve lost the 5 pounds I gained plus another pound and a half.  I weigh less today than I have weighed in nearly 8 years.

Every day I wake up and weigh.  Every day I look at that small weight loss (I consider it a gain in the goal book).  Every day I commit to 500 calories that day.  A pound of weight loss overnight is enough to give me big motivation to keep going.  It is a little positive reinforcement in the midst of something that isn’t that fun or enjoyable (but necessary).

This morning as I thought about looking down at that scale and seeing 202 and the feeling of elation that came with it I was reminded of helping kids in our computer labs a couple of years ago as they struggled to write better essays in preparation for the 8th Grade Writing Assessment.

Most of them hated those practice essays.  But this year was different.  We were piloting some software that would automatically grade essays and offer feedback.  As students revised, scores changed and charts were produced.  We had them type their essays into Word and then copy and paste them into the program.  They looked at the results with sullen eyes.  Their score was uninspiring.

Then we told them to change one thing.  In some cases we had them add a quote.  In others, we asked them to add a simile (comparing two things using like or as).  They dutifully added one sentence, saved their work, and re-scored it.  In most cases, their scores went up a full point.  Suddenly their eyes got big.  Their mouths dropped open.  Over and over we heard the same question, “Is it really that simple?”

Yep.

Small changes.  Big motivation.

I’ve now finished six weeks on the HCG Hormone Therapy Diet.  Yesterday I moved from 500 calories a day to 1,000 calories a day for the next three weeks as I get my body used to handling more calories again.  So the journey continues for a bit.

I lost 30 pounds in five weeks.  That sounds wonderful, but I lost 28 pounds in four weeks.  And that sounds better!  The downside is that the fifth week I stayed at 500 calories a day, torturing myself at times while watching others eat, only to find I had barely moved the scale with a two pound loss.

You can imagine the frustration of spending the last week losing absolutely nothing.  That’s right.  I ate 500 calories a day, took my HCG injections, and even started jogging (burning anywhere from 300 to 500 calories depending on the time on the road), and at the end of the week my weight on the scale looked like this:  212, 211, 213, 212, 211, 210, 212.  Frustrating.

Yesterday, as I said, I increased my calories to 1,000.  It was actually difficult to eat that many calories!  I was still careful to eat things that were “good” for me.  I treated myself to a Breakfast Power Sandwich at Panera.  It was the first bread I have had in 6 weeks.  The rest of the day was chicken, vegetables, and fruit.  All fresh.

I woke up this morning and weighed in at 209.  Yep.  I ate twice as much and lost 3 pounds overnight.

I have spent so much time concentrating on my weight, that I lost site of my waist size.  I used to have 3 basic sizes of clothes in my closet: Optimal, Fat, and Way Too Fat.  I got rid of the Way Too Fat clothes a week ago.  I’m wearing my Fat clothes now (yes 210 pounds used to be heavy for me!).

So to celebrate, I got out a pair of pants I hadn’t been able to wear in a long time.  I tried them on a couple of weeks ago and they were still too snug to wear.  Today they were too big! I was in shock!  This perfectly good pair of dress slacks are now a give-away item because I wasn’t paying attention to everything.

We get like this in education these days.  We look at the end-of-year test results and see that math is a low point in our class, or our school, or our district.  And so we throw everything we can at math.  But at the end of the year we find our language arts scores have dipped.

In school, like weight loss, we simply cannot afford to concentrate just on one thing.  We have multiple data points for a reason.

If we fail to learn this lesson, even the best laid plans of getting into our favorite clothing will wind up being a missed opportunity.  In weight loss, its just a pair of pants.

In education, its a child’s future.

I have approximately one week left of the six weeks I agreed to do with the HCG Hormone Diet plan.  For those of you who may not know (or may not have followed my posts of the last few weeks), I have been injecting myself with HCG Hormone (the pregnancy hormone) and living on 500 calories a day.

It has been much easier to maintain the 500 calories a day than I initially thought it would.  Easier.  But not always easy.  At the end of 4 weeks I had lost 25 pounds.  Those 4 weeks included 10 days on the road to Philadelphia and New York.  During those 10 days it was very difficult to quantify calories.  I had no scale on which to check my progress.  And there were some days when I was surrounded by the most luscious, delicious food I have ever seen.

I should have lost 30 pounds by the end of that 4th week.  I missed my goal by 5 pounds.  Not a big deal.

This week has been the toughest week, however.  I’m back home where it should be “easier.”  Instead, after being home a couple of days I found that I had gained 2 pounds.  It is now Friday, and I am back where I started at the beginning of the week.  I’ve lost a total of 25 pounds.

Were my expectations too high?  Was I being unrealistic?  Should I pound my chest and cry out to the heavens, “Unfair!”?

I think the answer to all of those questions is a resounding, “No.”

Sometimes there are issues that are simply out of our control.  Like knowing it is time to eat in order to keep the fire of your metabolism burning, but finding yourself in a restaurant that has absolutely nothing that comes close to what you need to stay within your calorie guidelines.

You do the best you can.  Track your progress.  Make a note about what to do or not to do next time.  And move on.

Teachers across the country are now going to be evaluated on student progress.  Not proficiency ratings.  When we talk about evaluating teachers based on “student test scores,” we really mean “on the amount of knowledge gained as shown through change in overall scores from last year’s test to this.”

Can we control all of that?  Is it all laid at the feet of teachers?

The simple answer is no.  We can’t.  Statistically, the single most important factor in the growth of knowledge of a student is the teacher.  Single most important.  But not the only factor.

We can’t control the student’s state of mind on test day after a huge fight with her parents on the way to school.  Or the fact that he just broke up with his girlfriend yesterday.  Or the fact that a tornado came through his neighborhood and totally destroyed his house and now he is living out of his parent’s car.

What we can do is understand that these are the outliers of our data.  Not every student had a traumatic event just prior to testing.  The outliers get sucked up by the mean, and overall, we have a pretty good indicator of how we did as a teacher.

If I ate every meal at a restaurant that didn’t fit the confines of my diet, I wouldn’t be very successful as a dieter.  But if I accept that I can’t control everything, keep those outliers to a minimum, and look at the 25 pounds I did lose instead of the 5 pounds I should have lost, I think I could safely say my dieting was “highly effective.”

As teachers, I hope we can keep our eye on the big picture of educating children to become responsible, knowledgeable, productive citizens and not focus on whether we got a -0.2 or a +4.7.

Today is the last day of ISTE 2011 in Philadelphia.  It has been a great week.  It is well worth coming to ISTE even if you never go to a session.  Just spending time with people who love what you love (and are much better at it), wandering the ever expanding exhibit hall, and meeting up with friends you normally only see in a thumbnail picture on Facebook or Twitter is well worth the time and effort.  Oh, and there’s some technology stuff here, too.

I did have a couple of major hurdles to jump this week with respect to my diet routine.  Although there is a small fitness center in my hotel, there are no scales, so I have no idea if I have gained weight, lost weight, or just maintained.  Everywhere you go, somebody is offering you food.  And lots of it.  I’ve had dinner with the great folks from TechSmith, Discovery, Edmodo, and more.  The restaurants they choose are fabulous.  The menus mouthwatering to read.  But, I have tried to stick as close to my 500 calories as possible, although I know I’ve done more like 600 a couple of days.  But I’ve walked miles every day.  Sweated in the Philadelphia heat.  So maybe….

So, I’ve had to do other things to try to get a handle on how things are going with the weight loss.  Obviously, the way my pants and shirts fit are a big indicator.  The hole I am using on my belt is a big one as well.

But there are two that seem to be at odds with one another.  When I stand in front of the mirror, I look thinner than I have in a long, long time.  I can see it in my face and neck.  I can even see it around my waist when I turn sideways.  And yet, when I look straight down, my gut still seems to jut out in front of me way too far.  These two perspectives seem to be at odds with each other.  But I think I need them both to make me realize more closely where I truly am.  Yes, I’m losing weight.  No, I’m not there yet.

Assessment is the same.  Let’s leave behind the problem of in-class grades not matching student performance on TCAP.  That’s two totally different ways of looking at two very different sets of data.  What we need is to look at the same data from different perspectives.

Let’s say, for instance, we give a quiz or a test in our classroom, and the entire grade distribution (across 25 kids in elementary or 135 in secondary) runs as As and Bs.  We can feel pretty good about that (if we are convinced the test wasn’t too easy).  But let’s look closer.  Nearly every student in the class missed the same two questions. Suddenly, I have a different result.  Yes, they all did pretty good on the assessment, but they are all still weak in one area.

Looking more closely, I might see that one question 9, the one where most students got it wrong, the vast majority chose B, but it should have been D.  Now I have an even better perspective.  I can better pinpoint where the problems are.  I can explore why they chose this answer.  I can re-teach with much better effectiveness.

For schools, it is not enough to simply look at the overall percentages of students that score Proficient or Above.  Sure, with that one perspective perhaps we can feel good about our progress.  But we need other perspectives to show us where the weaknesses are.  Weak students.  Weak instruction. Weak professional development.  And more.

So I’m going to smile when I look in the mirror and see how far I’ve come.  But I’m going to keep looking down to remind me how far I need to go.

Its all a matter of perspective.

I have now completed the first six days of my HCG Hormone Therapy diet.  I have to admit it has been a lot easier than I thought it would be.  Of course, in a perfect world I would have followed the diet to the letter.  However, this world (currently) is far from perfect, and I’ll be the first to admit that I was in situations where I tried to do the best I could, but I knew I wasn’t following the guidelines (or restrictions depending on your point of view) to the letter.

The chart to the left demonstrates how the weight came off over the past week.  The first two days represent those “load” days I through which I struggled to eat everything I could possibly fit in my stomach without throwing up.

After that, I have been on a 500 calorie a day diet.  So I lost 10 pounds in 4 days.  I weighed in at the clinic and got huge congratulations and high fives and fist pumps.

It felt really good.

Then I had to go to a conference Friday night and all day Saturday.  I was having to pick and choose food without being able to weigh it.  I tried really hard to control portions.  I didn’t have access to enough water.  The list could go on and on.  The end result is that I gained 1 to 2 pounds back and stayed there for 2 days.

If I was concentrating on the short term, I would have been greatly discouraged (ok, truth be told I was a little discouraged).  But then I thought, “Tim, 9 pounds in 6 days ain’t bad.”

That’s when I decided it wasn’t enough to write my weight down every day.  I’m a techie after all.  I did what techies do.  I created a chart to help me look at the long term.  My goal at the end of 30 days is to be down 30 pounds.  That’s doable according to the litearture associated with this plan.  That would put me at 210 pounds.  I would be within 20 pounds of my ultimate goal of 190.

Based on the trendline of the first few days, you can see that I would be well beyond my goal.

If I looked solely had one data point, or one small set of data points, I might not know how doable this is.  That might lead to burnout and cause me to give up.  But, looking at the long term tends to still drive me on.  While I am eating one day at a time, I’m not concentrating on one day at a time.  I have to think long term.

I’ve seen this mistake made in school.  Kids (or parents) look at one test score.  They freak out.  They feel bad about themselves.  They think they are stupid.  Immediately, they want to create more work for the teacher by asking for extra credit.  If we could show them the long term effects of all their data points, perhaps they would know that this one hiccup is just that: a hiccup.

TCAP is often viewed that way.  One data point on one day.  And to some extent that’s true.  And like my diet, sometimees external factors enter into the formulation of the end result.  Kids don’t eat breakfast.  They don’t get enough sleep.  They had a fight with a parent or a sibling on the way to school.  They broke up with their boyfriend or girlfriend.  Teachers have put so much pressure on them that they choke at clutch time.  This list goes on and on as well.

I’m not saying TCAP is good or bad.  I’ve studied assessment for a long time.  I’m a fan.  Here are the long term things I look at:

• How does this year’s TCAP score for this student compare to last year’s score?
• How does the TCAP score for this student compare to the three benchmark tests he or she took during the year?
• Is there a connection to the TCAP result (Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic) and the child’s GPA?
• If the answer to that last question is no, then we have to ask if the teacher is setting the child up for a feeling of failure because the “A” or the “B” came too easily.
• If the child is Proficient overall, are there areas where he or she is Basic? or Advanced?  And what can I do with that?
• How do the scores of all my students look?  I might not have a done a great job with one, but I may find I did do a great job with 10.

These are just a few of the ways to think about testing in the long term sense.  What questions do you ask?

As you may have noticed by now if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, or read this blog regularly, or visit my 365 Photo Challenge page, I am trying to learn how to take better pictures.  One of the first things I learned about improving my pictures was a little thing called “the Rule of Thirds.”

You will see what I mean in the picture in this post.  Each picture is divided in thirds from top to bottom and from left to right.  If you are shooting a horizon, for instance, you may want the horizon line to be on the blue line at the bottom to give you a lot more sky, or on the blue line at the top to show more depth to the image of the land or water.

Fairy Cake

The ideal (many times) is to get faces or objects of interest on one of the intersections of the lines as shown in the red dots.  In this case, I lucked into a shot that had both my granddaughter’s face and her cake on a red dot spot in the picture.  I accomplished this by turning the camera slightly to put the image at an angle.

The Rule of Thirds will help anyone with any type camera take a more interesting picture.  Gone are the days of putting a small head and body smack dab in the center of the frame where he or she gets lots in the surrounding scenery.  Of course, this is just one rule of photography; and, like most rules, there are times when it has to be broken in order to use another rule.

For me, teaching to standards is a lot like that small head and body shot that gets lost in the scenery.  Not only is it uninteresting, but it makes for a pitiful education experience.

My advice? (from the sidelines, of course)

Teach to the red dots.  Those are the ideas and thought processes just off center from the standards.  Those are the areas where students have to think and not just recite.  Those are the areas where students create and not just list.  Those red dots are where rigor, relevance, and relationship line up to make education interesting to the students again.

Engage your students in thinking again.  Its difficult, I know.  Believe me, I know. I know.  But don’t take no for an answer.

I’m committed to the 365 Photo Challenge.  Taking one good picture a day and posting it online.  Not just taking a picture, but taking a good one.  Sometimes I get that shot in 10 or 12 attempts.  Sometimes I have to take 100 or more pictures to get that one.

Your classroom won’t be any different.  Keep asking the questions.  Keep pointing them in the right direction.  Keep hounding them.  Give them questions in the classroom.  Give them questions over lunch.  Give them questions at home.  Post questions on your website.  Ask them in your blogs.  Engage the students.  Engage their parents.  Make them think.

If you can get a student to think, the standards and the standardized tests will take care of themselves.

You can use the Rule of Thirds to take better pictures.  And you can use it to create better learners, too.

One of my favorite stories about the ministry involves a young minister who was assigned to a church where the former pastor had been there for over 30 years.  It was a daunting task to follow in the footsteps of a man so loved and revered by the small country congregation.

After a couple of months in his new pastorate, he noticed that the congregation was not really engaged when he would offer communion at the end of the Sunday morning services.  They did not look happy.  In fact, they would rarely look at him at all.  A few would walk to the front of the church, accept the wafer, and then quickly throw a disapproving glance his way.

Finally, in desperation, he went to the head of his deacon committee and asked if he knew what the problem could be.  “Well,” said the older gentleman, “I think the congregation is just used to having communion served a certain way after so many years.  You see, our former pastor had a ritual where he would walk over to the side of the church to serve communion instead of standing in the middle as you are.  When he prayed, he would reach down and touch the radiator.  I guess we just kind of got used to a certain ritual for our communion.”

Bewildered, the young man went to see the retired pastor the next day to ask about this “touching the radiator” thing.  After explaining how the congregation was not enjoying communion because he wasn’t touching the radiator when he prayed, the elder pastor threw his head back and let out a loud belly laugh.  “I’m so sorry,” he said after finally catching his breath.  “There is nothing spiritual about manner in which I served communion.  I went over to the side of the church and touched the radiator so I wouldn’t give anyone an electrical shock from my shoes running across the church carpeting!”

This congregation had seen something happen the same way for so long they began to feel there was something mysterious, magical, even spiritual about it.  They would not be satisfied unless they saw the same thing from their new pastor.

I wonder sometimes if teacher evaluations are like this.  Principals come into classrooms and “judge” the effectiveness of a new teacher on a regular basis.  But what happens when the principal doesn’t see what he or she “expects” to see?  What happens when the rituals they think work aren’t present?

Recently, Dr. Riggins of Lee University spoke to a group of aspiring administrators about a study he and his colleagues did a few years ago.  In the study, he asked principals to rate various teachers on a group of items the literature says make for effective teachers.  The principals completed a Likert scale for each of the teachers in question, ranking them from not very effective to very effective.  They were not told why they were doing the rankings.

When the data was collected, a correlation was made between the principals’ evaluations and the “effectiveness scores” (value added) of each of the teachers.  And the result?

There was a fairly strong negative correlation between what the principals perceived as effective and the actual effectiveness of teachers.

In other words, the more effective a principal rated a teacher, the less effective that teacher actually was.  And vice versa.

So my question is this: Were they looking for the radiator thing?

OK, maybe I just wanted to get your attention with that headline.  But it is a serious question when it comes to reading strategies.  I just got back from TAMS where over twenty teachers from our middle school attended a day and a half of workshops and keynotes (along with lots of food, an indoor water park, shopping at an outlet mall, shooting billiards, and watching the Celtics lose a 14 point lead in the NBA finals).

I chose my first session selfishly.  It was being held in the same room where I was scheduled to present in the 2nd session.  It just happened to deal with reading strategies, which is an area where I am struggling as a middle school teacher.  I’ll post more about this session later when I have time to look back through my notes.  For now, I just wanted to post a small note about something that really got me thinking.

As readers, we learn to chunk early.  Chunking is simply the activity we do to break down words or numbers into something more easily remembered or understood.  That’s why there are hyphens in phone and social security numbers.  A phone number is broken down into 123-456-7890.  We can more easily chunk three or four numbers than we can ten.

Words are the same.  Good readers chunk both through phonics and through syllables.   So a word like auditorium is chunked as aud-i-tor-i-um or au-di-tor-ium.  Our presenter offered a nice tool for assessing how our students are chunking words.  Using crayons, colored markers, or colored pencils, simply ask students to chunk certain words by coloring in what they “see” in their mind when they pronounce or read the word.

An example she gave was the word “brushing.”  I’ve included 3 possibilities in the image to the left.  By analyzing how your kids are chunking words, you can easily see where they are making mistakes or why it might be difficult for them to make sense of certain words.

Unlike so many of those television shows on obscure cable channels…try this at home.